


Death Cab for Cutie

by ballade_at_thirtyfive



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Future Fic, It's 2100 and everyone's dead, M/M, faaaar future fic though, it's also 4am and I'm sorry, or getting there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 20:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6768568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballade_at_thirtyfive/pseuds/ballade_at_thirtyfive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 2100 and everyone's dead. Or getting there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Cab for Cutie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anonlytree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonlytree/gifts).



> I know!! I knooooow it's hot dorky dads era! I have no excuse except you started it with that line in 'Old Man Squad'. Sorry?
> 
> Later Edit: anonlytree not only forgave me for inflicting drama llama on the hot dads era but also put together the most amazing [soundtrack](http://wrotefootballficiregretnothing.tumblr.com/post/144119946741/or-death-in-pastel-a-soundtrack-for-messy#notes). I'll go wander the streets screaming 'There's blood on your legs/ I love you' now. See you on the other side.

He approaches you at your grandmother’s funeral.

Tacky, of course, but not as bad as the flower arrangements. And given your line of work, decorum is not something you’ve come to expect from your clients.

You pass him your business card and he goes off to console your mother, who looks frail under the weight of people clumsily paying their respects.

You down your drink, waiting on the edge of things for it to be over.

It’s pointless though. Your grandmother gathered enough attention in her 120 years to make for a very interesting funeral. The way she decided to wrap things up is also bound to keep the conversation going way past your headache.

People walk up to you, excitement seeping into platitudes they haven't had much chance to use in the past half a century. They pat their dry eyes and tell you that you look just like your grandmother. In retrospect, you should have protested more to the idea of having an open casket funeral. It’s not as insulting as it may sound, though. Your grandmother hadn’t aged a day since she was forty, and funnily enough, black really isn’t your colour.

***

You weren't even born when it started. The technicalities of it never caught your interest and your family's money sheltered you from its politics. Perhaps not completely, but enough to dull the sense of wrongness associated with immortality being bought and kept in the family like some trinket. It wasn't a hard thing to accept, anyway. By then, death had become the ultimate punishment for those not lucky enough to make it big. Much like eternity was for everyone else.

Of course, there were some who could afford to escape such punishment. And that’s when you came in, updating wills, going through decades of bonds and offshore accounts, sorting any on-roll cases, tracking down old loves, doing due diligence on family members and generally making sure death was the ultimate five-star experience.

The Assisted Suicide Act lengthened the process needlessly, but then again, it was written by people who had all the time in the world. Plus, you perfected the dosage so that your clients were only conscious for less than an hour or so of the mandated eight. Which was really more for your benefit than anything else.

There’s nothing more draining than other people’s regrets.

***

You meet him at The Grosvenor for brunch. You play with your food and he plays with his cutlery, neither of you keen to broach the subject. Unfortunately, there’s only so much small talk you can stomach.

It’s going to be a hell of a job. Between his eight children-

‘I had a particularly slutty phase in my 90s’, he shrugs.

-And his overly diversified portfolio, you’re looking at several months’ work. Assuming you can settle out of court the various lawsuits.

You make a note on calling a lawyer specialized in acquisitions and scribble some names of people who would ‘take the longest to drive his business into the ground’.

You fidget in your plush chair as he glances at his watch.

‘So, if you don’t mind me asking, Senior Alonso, why now?’

He pauses for a second, filtering between half-truths, his mouth the joyful mockery of a smile.

‘You could say I gained momentum in recent weeks. Plus, there might be some dignity in it after all.’

You don’t bother contracting him on that as he’ll find out soon enough.

Anyway, he doesn’t look overly keen on sharing and you’re not overly keen to know.

You eat your dessert in a sense of distant understanding, and he walks you to a cab, hand on the small of your back, ever the charmer.

***

You didn’t know him particularly well. He wasn’t exactly a close friend of your grandmother’s. Christmas cards and occasional scabbing at wounds from what you could tell. But you remember a certain derision she forcefully projected whenever he seemed to have made a decision.

That’s why when six months later he calls to postpone your appointment from a payphone across the world, you’re merely annoyed.

‘You see, Miss Gerrard, I once got myself a yellow card when winning four-nil in a semi-final.’

He says it as if it’s supposed to mean something to you.

You consider telling him it doesn’t. Fortunately, you’re all too familiar with people constructing meaning from things they barely remember doing, so you just hang up and add the afternoon to your billable hours. 

***

He postpones several times after that, half talking about giving someone a head start, as it’s only fair, and half having panic attacks at the idea of choosing his last meal.

You ask if he’s even serious about it and he replies with ‘Dead serious’, collapsing into a fit of giggles on the other end of the line. It’s a bit unsettling as most of your clients are already tired of their unfortunate sense of humour.

You shrug and go on sorting other people’s lives. Between a B-rated actor with a good eye for the stock market, and what seems like half of the Qatari royal family, you hardly have time to think of him.

***

He knocks at your door in the middle of the night several months later and you let him in, as by this point he’s leaving you more money than he’s set aside for his first son.

He’s so drunk his moves almost betray his age. He collapses on your couch, ready to meet his maker, as you explain that you need him to sober up before he signs the consent forms.

He proclaims that he hasn’t done anything sober in the past fifty years and has no intention to start now.

You let him slobber all over your couch and go back to bed.

***

He’s strangely subdued the next afternoon, head in his hands, fighting the phantom feeling of a hangover. It’s a cold, rainy day and you offer to fly to San Sebastian, somehow willing to drag it out a bit more.

‘No need.. I was never one to die in my own bed anyway.’

You make him a cup of tea, feeling somehow jaded. It is mere courtesy to this uneasiness that he keeps on talking.

‘I find it terribly hard to believe in all that heaven and hell business.. I was born in the wrong part of the country, perhaps. Or born wrong altogether..’

He looks up to you, frighteningly hopeful. 

‘But in the off chance.. That wondrous, torturous off chance..’

He stands up and signs the papers with careful flourish.

‘I could stay here forever, until all feeling eroded..’, he muses, putting his initials on every page and shrugging his shoulders.

‘..I would still find a way to have a good time, but you know..’ 

He turns to you, palms up and giddy like a man who’s signed his death sentence.

He takes off his shirt and lies on the couch.

Your hands shake on various needles and buttons.

You’ve never killed someone on an off-chance before.

Time goes by slowly, rain going into storm going into rain. You think it’s summer.

It feels a bit improvised, neither of you having much control over what’s to come. He asks if you’ll stay with him to the end, and you remind him that you’re paid on commission. He dashingly tries to laugh.

Rain and music merge together so you could almost ignore his next words. You don’t, though, turning to him and letting the unfamiliar pain uncurl within you.

‘Your grandfather..-’

‘I’ve never met him, Xabi.’

‘I know.. But, as you’ve probably learned, dying men will hold on to anything.’

He smiles and you smile and he uses his last breathe to congratulate himself on the tragic *and* funny playlist.

***

You sort out some tricky inheritance issue for some solar energy magnate, you dodge your mother’s phone calls and decide to hire an assistant.

You go to yoga and end up crying on a rowing machine.

And life goes quietly on.

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrLU96xtSqw this is part of the playlist as it has the tragic covered. Obv open for suggestions for the funny part.


End file.
